Israel’s military said Thursday it killed seven suspected Islamic State-affiliated militants in territory it controls near the border with Syria, reflecting the risk of spillover as the Assad regime presses a military campaign to retake the country’s southwest.
The Israeli air force late Wednesday struck the militants as they crossed into Israeli-controlled territory with weapons, military officials said. The military described it as a “triangle area” near the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan in the occupied Golan Heights.
The strike comes amid continued fighting in Syria’s southwest and is one of several recent incidents that Israel’s military has responded to with force. Israel warned it won’t allow any encroachment of the fighting into its territory after shooting down a Syrian fighter jet last week it said crossed a little more than a mile into its airspace over the Golan Heights.
Syrian regime forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, have been battling Islamic State militants for weeks to capture a small area along the border with the Golan Heights. Syrian state media reported this week that government forces had nearly defeated the militants, which would give the regime complete control over the country’s southwest for the first time since 2012.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said Israeli forces conducted a search on Thursday and found seven bodies as well as five AK-47s, explosive belts and what appeared to be grenades.
“It did not seem as if they were seeking refuge...they were moving in a combat formation with combat equipment,” he said.
Col. Conricus said Israel suspects the militants are part of the Khaled bin Waleed army, an Islamic State affiliate. Israel’s air force targeted the militants when they were a few hundred meters into Israeli territory and approaching Israel’s security fence in the Golan Heights, he said.
The Israeli military has observed Islamic State fighters scattered near the border as the Syrian regime “appears very close” to wrapping up its campaign, Col. Conricus said.
Israel’s military said Israel holds Syria’s government responsible for keeping militants from crossing into Israel. It said its military response to Wednesday’s crossing and other incidents are part of an effort to enforce a 1974 cease-fire agreement with Syria that established a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
Separately, Russia said Thursday it would deploy military police in the Golan Heights border area to assist United Nations peacekeepers, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.
Israel confirmed the deployment but declined to provide any additional information.
The Syrian regime’s campaign followed weeks of a military offensive it launched against anti-government rebels in the same area. Rebel groups eventually reached agreements to surrender and withdraw from towns and cities and cede all opposition-held areas to the regime.
The regime has struck similar deals with Islamic State militants in recent days, allowing some fighters, their families and other civilians to withdraw toward the country’s desert to the east, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group.
But displacing the militants raises the risk of attacks on civilians. Last week, other Islamic State militants who had been displaced from around the capital, Damascus, launched a massive attack including suicide bombings on a predominantly Druze area in Sweida province, killing more than 250 people.
The militants also kidnapped some three dozen civilians, mostly women, to be used as bargaining chips in the battle against regime forces. Local efforts to negotiate their release has so far failed, according to locals and others.
Islamic State sent photos of the Druze women to their families and recorded a video of one relaying the terror group’s demands to stop the military offensive in exchange for their release, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. “If you don’t meet their demand they will kill us," the woman said in the video, according to SITE.
Wednesday’s incident marks the second time Israel has targeted Islamic State fighters near its border. Israel conducted a similar operation in November 2016, also killing several militants, but Col. Conricus said the event took place “slightly north” from the latest operation.
— Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv and Thomas Grove in Moscow contributed to this article.
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